Titans Return Scourge (2016)

When Megatron was transformed by Unicron into Galvatron in The Transformers: The Movie, he was not the only character given an upgrade. Thundercracker, one the original Decepticon jets, was reformatted into Scourge, although unlike Galvatron having been Megatron, Scourge is almost always considered a new character entirely, and no one seems to care about his having previously been Thundercracker except as a strictly academic exercise. The usual explanation for this is that Thundercracker was dead when his corpse was used to create Scourge, but since Thundercracker was clearly still alive when tossed out of Astrotrain, I really don't see why we should assume he simply "fell offline" while floating in space when Megatron didn't.^* Such are the thoughts of the obsessive Transformers fan....

In this new form, Scourge is a flying soapdish hovercraft (that somehow flies around in space... but, hey, you don't need to be aerodynamic to fly in space, right?). Other versions of Scourge as a toy have played around with the altmode somewhat, sometimes to something that at least looks like it should fly, but this toy, from the Titans Return line, more or less faithfully executes the design seen in The Transformers: The Movie, with the obvious addition of a compartment for Fracas, the small robot (called a "Titan Master" in this release) who turns into Scourge's head with this toy (well-informed fans will recognize the name Fracas for having previously belonged to Scourge's Targetmaster weapon from the remold of the original toy that came out about a year after the movie). Like most Titans Return toys, Scourge also comes with an accessory that serves as a weapon while also providing another potential seat for the Titan Master, but I find these pretty inelegant at the best of times, so I seldom use them, except when keeping everything together in storage.

According to Unicron (as well as Scourge's Targetmaster Tech Specs... but, oddly, only given secondary status in the original version), Scourge is a tracker, and this ability is seen in the movie somewhat as Galvatron and his new troops hunt down the Matrix of Leadership (the only thing, it is said, that can destroy Unicron), but I'm hard-pressed to think of another instance of this function being referenced. Scourge isn't really given much of a distinct personality, and the fact that he is given command of a group of physically-identical troops called "the Sweeps" doesn't make him stand out any better. Even so, as one of Unicron's creations, he remains a concept that the franchise revisits again and again (if only to fade into the background again immediately afterward...).

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^*In point of fact, the scene of Scourge's creation is just ambiguous enough that it's possible that it wasn't Thundercracker who became Scourge, but rather one of the nearby Insecticons. But the scene and its accompanying dialogue supports Thundercracker pretty strongly, and there is a much more contentious debate of this kind, which we'll get to later in the year.